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The Dead End and related productions are probably the best known films based on the subject of juvenile delenquency. The films were based on a play written Sidney Kingsley (1934). The play "Dead End" was produced on Broadway (1935-37). For the production the producers chose kids off the streets of New York rather than actors. Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn and famed director William Wyler saw the play decided to make a film version (1937). Apprently the Hollywood kids under contract were to clean cut for the role. So Goldwyn brought six of the boys (Halop, Jordan, Hall, Punsly, Dell, and Leo Gorcey) to Hollywood and made the only United Artist's film in the series--"Dead End" (1937). The boys apparently ran riot during the shoot, running a truck into a sound studio. The film was a hit, but Goldwyn wanted nothing more to do with the Dead End Kids. Hewashed his hands of the boys and sold the film rights to Warner Brothers. As a result the other five films were Warner Brother films. And after the main films there were other reincarnations into te 1950s: The East Side Kids, The Little Tough Guys, and The Bowery Boys.
The Dead End and related productions are probably the best known films based on the subject of juvenile delenquency. The films were based on a play written Sidney Kingsley (1934). The play "Dead End" was produced on Broadway (1935-37). For the production the producers chose kids off the streets of New York rather than actors.
Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn and famed director William Wyler saw the play decided to make a film version (1937). Apprently the Hollywood kids under contract were to clean cut for the role. So Goldwyn brought six of the boys (Halop, Jordan, Hall, Punsly, Dell, and Leo Gorcey) to Hollywood and made the only United Artist's film in the series--"Dead End" (1937). The boys apparently ran riot during the shoot, running a truck into a sound studio. The film was a hit, but Goldwyn wanted nothing more to do with the Dead End Kids. Hewashed his hands of the boys and sold the film rights to Warner Brothers.
The Dead End Kids were also called the East Side Kids and Bowary Boys in later reincarnations. There were five main characters. United Artists could not find boys under contract who could authentically handle the parts. So they contracted some of the boys who were in the original play--all kids off the streets of New York rather than actors.
Leo Gorcey (1917-69) was the leader of the Dead End Kids. He continued his film career into the 1960s.
Huntz (Henry) Hall (1919-99) played Sach he also persued a film career into the 90s.
Billy Halop (1920-76) one of the stars of the group and played different characters in various films. Halop appeared in several of the Dead End Kids films. One of the stars of the group was a boy actor called Billy Halop, who played various characters in various films.
He later served in the US Army as a Sergeant stationed in the Special Servicesduring World War II. He was discharged in 1946 and returned to Hollywood. He was in "Dangerous Years" with Marilyn Monroe. He had difficulty finding future roles, but did appear in radio and television.
Bobby Jordan (1923-65) was one of the youger Dead End Kids. He worked in Hollywood through the 1950s.
Bernard Punsly (1923-2004) was the last srvuiving Dead End Kid. He appeared in "Angels with Dirty Faces" and "Hell's Kitchen." Unlike the other boys, he gave up acting after the series and became a doctor.
After United Artists had trouble handling the boys, Warner Brothers purchased the contact. As a result the other five films were Warner Brother films. Warner Brothers thus made a five-film series of films
derived from the Broadway play by Sidney Kingsley and first United Artist film. The series was known as the "Dead End" films. The group of boy actors, several from the original play, became known as "the Dead End Kids". They played a group of deprived, street boys who are tainted by crime but who are nevertheless likeable and turn out to have possibilities as useful and reformed teenagers. Perhaps the best remembered of the Dead End films is "Angles with Dirty Faces" (1938), largely because it had major adult stars--James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Humphrey Bogart.
This is one of famous Warner Brothers Dead End Kids films, made in 1938-39. The date of "Angels" is 1938. Again, the boy actor, Billy Halop, is featured as a boy called "Soapy." The plot concerns two boyhood friends, Rocky Sullivan (played by James Cagney) and Jerry Connally (played by Pat O'Brien). The two friends had a criminal childhood, but Rocky has grown up to be a notorious gangster while his friend Jerry has gone straight and become a priest. The paths of two boyhood friends diverge. A parish priest tries to discourage the Dead End Kids from idolizing a thug who returns to the old neighborhood. If the film is the one I think, it starts out with kids beating up a rich boy dressed in a dapper long pants suit.
Another reformatory film starred Humphrey Bogart in a role very much like Jimmy Cagney's in Mayor. The boys were played by members of the Dead End Kids. I remember Bobby Jordan played one of the inmates. He was issued a uniform with trousers too big for him in the waist; they kept falling down to his ankles if he didn't hold his pants up. In one scene during morning roll call on the assembly grounds of the reform school, the warden (played by a rather stout actor) notices Bobby's trousers sinking to the shoes during calisthenics. The warden summons him, front and center, and demands to know what the big idea is. Bobby expalins that his trousers are too big in the waist, and the warden's solution is to send him to the cook to be fattened until the trousers fit! Fortunately for Bobby, Humphrey Bogart is listening to all this, and tells the warden to "make the pants fit the boy, not the boy fit the pants."
Hell's Kitchen was another of the Dead End Kids films. Like "Crime School", it is also set in a reform
school that has fallen under the corrupt leadership of a superintendant named Krispan (played by Grant Mitchell). Buck Caesar (played by Stanley Fields) is a paroled convict who tries to improve conditions at
the reform school on the advice of his lawyer nephew, Jim Donahue (played by Ronald Reagan). One of the leading boys of the school is Tony (played by Billy Halop). The plot involves the school's hockey
team and its contest with a professional team to which the school is expected to lose. Krispan, the corrupt superintendant, is trying to discredit the reformer, Buck Caesar, and get him sent back to prison.
At one point one of the boys is locked in a freezer and dies. The boys eventually capture Krispan, make him go through a kind of trial. Krispan is properly punished through legal means, and Buck returns to
prison. The boys become the agents of justice.
Dead End Kids and an aging Jackie Searl. This was a sequel to "Angels With Dirty Faces". In this film, the Dead End Kids turn respectable and are taught to dress and behave in a more civilized manner. Again Billy Halop plays one of the lead boys, and we see him here in middle-class boys' clothes. He wears suits, neckties, and sleeveless sweaters. The film also featured Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan, Warner Brothers rising stars in the late 1930s. Billy Halop, one oif the original Dead End Kids, plays a boy named "Billy" in this film. we see him (on the right, in semi-profile) still wearing his street-gang clothes before the transformation--a rumpled open-necked sports shirt. Then we see him dressed up in a suit and tie.
And after the main films there were other reincarnations into the 1950s: The East Side Kids, The Little Tough Guys, and The Bowery Boys.
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